


Coming in Clutch

by audreycritter



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Brief Mention of Grief, Gen, Parental!Roy, awkward affection and platonic relationships, mild alchemy, non-graphic leg fracture, this was supposed to be crackfic oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26206285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Colonel Roy Mustang decides that Edward Elric needs to learn how to drive.It goes about as well as anything with Edward Elric usually does.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Roy Mustang
Comments: 24
Kudos: 252





	Coming in Clutch

**Author's Note:**

> wibbly-wobbly early canon.  
> first FMA fic!

Mud splattered on the windshield already slick with rain. Another glob followed, exploding across the glass. The door slammed shut and the car tilted in the muck as Alphonse and Edward Elric careened into the car as one person.

Colonel Roy Mustang hung halfway out the window and furiously scrubbed mud off with his drenched sleeve, smearing the mud until the glass was mostly transparent again.

“Drive,” he said breathlessly, falling back into the passenger seat, clutching his leg. The driver’s seat was empty.

“What?” Ed screeched, face pressed against the fogging glass as he tried to make out the angry crowd. He whipped his head around to stare at Roy, who stared back. “I can’t _drive_!”

“What?” Roy echoed, stricken to the point of idiocy. “My _leg_ is broken, I can’t…You’re in the damn military, what do you mean you–”

Another mudball hit the windshield and splattered flecks on Roy’s pale cheek.

“I’m _fourteen_!” Ed howled indignantly, slamming one hand on the leather bench seat and throwing himself forward between the passenger and driver seats to peer out the open window at the approaching crowd, unobscured by wet glass. He raised his hands. “I’m going to stop them.”

“No,” Roy said, with a growl. He shoved Ed hard back toward the bench, drawing a breath through his teeth. “We are _not_ drawing any more attention than necessary.”

“Oh, now you want to be modest,” Ed complained, throwing his arms in the arm and then crossing them. “You just don’t want me to do anything while _you_ can’t.”

Roy muttered under his breath while turning the ignition, something that sounded suspiciously like a string of foul curses. Al tapped his fingers on his metal knees, nervous.

The crowd was almost to them now, shouting. Many of them waved shovels or hunting rifles. The car jerked once, twice in the mud, tires squealing, and then shot off with a lurch toward the road.

Ed and Al watched out the rearview mirror as the figures grew smaller and smaller. Roy was still muttering, and when they’d left the crowd behind as mere specks on the horizon, Ed climbed over the divider to sit on the passenger seat.

The rain washed the mud off, but sometimes Roy leaned forward and hooked an arm out the window to rub the windshield off. His sleeve was so wet it barely did anything. Ed watched him, wary, while he mumbled as if nobody else was in the car.

Roy’s face was ghost-white with pain, but only once, when he shifted climbing a hill, did a noise escape him. It was a too-shrill yelp that he swallowed so fast it became a rumbling roar deep in his throat.

After a glance at Al, Ed settled back against the cold seat.

The drive back to East City was long and quiet. Al hummed as the rain let up, and Roy navigated through the city straight for the military hospital.

“Well, that didn’t go too badly,” Ed said, when they braked to a stop. “It could have been worse. We have a lead for where to go next. Thanks for the ride, Colonel.”

“You,” Roy hissed, his forehead resting on the steering wheel. Ed froze and tried not to notice the sweat beaded on the Colonel’s forehead. It made his stomach twist in a guilt he didn’t want to acknowledge, or feel responsible to dispel. He carried enough without being faulted for _this_.

“Me?” Ed snapped. “This isn’t–”

“You are going to learn to _drive_ ,” Roy ground out, chest heaving. He closed his eyes and a shudder wracked his shoulders.

“Do you want me to carry you in, Colonel?” Al offered from the backseat.

In answer, Roy threw the door open and swung himself out. He stood, keeping his balance with the hood of the car, and slammed the door so hard the glass in every window rattled.

He took two limping steps toward the hospital entrance and collapsed.

“He’s a dumbass,” Ed muttered furiously, scrambling to get out of the car.

“Brother,” Al said, something between a plea and a rebuke.

Alphonse carried Colonel Mustang in.

Edward stayed outside and kicked a tire, scowling fiercely.

* * *

“No,” Riza Hawkeye said, shaking her head.

“Lieutenant, that’s hardly the level of respect I’d expect from your rank in the military,” Colonel Roy Mustang began, hoping that the mix of teasing and stern masked the near-pleading he felt.

“No, _sir_ ,” Hawkeye amended firmly.

“Lieutenant,” Roy said, pinching the bridge of his nose. They were in his office, alone– his cast leg was propped at an angle beneath the desk. It had not, as he’d falsely hoped, made Riza take it easy on him.

He’d been hoping for less paperwork and she somehow managed to produce _more_.

 _”A good time to catch up,”_ she had said.

He was fairly certain she was also slightly punishing him for his failure to take her on the ill-fated trip with the Elrics. He was too stubborn to apologize for not doing so, or admit to her how much trouble it would have saved. Yet.

“Colonel, all due respect, the last thing Edward Elric needs is the knowledge to pilot two thousand pounds of metal.”

“I’m not _giving_ him a car,” Roy said tightly. “I’m just asking you to teach him how to _drive_ one. For emergencies.”

“What emergencies would those be, sir?” Hawkeye asked sharply. “I was under the impression you weren’t planning any more solo emergencies.”

“For times when _we_ aren’t there,” he said, emphasizing the pronoun. If she could dig her heels in, so could he. Metaphorically.

“I thought you weren’t issuing him a car, sir,” Hawkeye said.

Roy hated it when she acted dense to point out how dense he sounded to her.

He steepled his fingers and leaned against them. He needed a drink– his leg ached all the way to his hip.

“Is it an order, sir?”

“No,” he exhaled, leaning back in his padded chair.

“A request?” she asked.

They’d been through a lot together. He wouldn’t order her to do anything he didn’t think was absolutely necessary– she had a keen mind and honed instinct. Delegating what he could was what had kept them alive for so long.

“Yes,” he said, with a note of relief. “That’s all. I’m asking you to teach Edward Elric to drive.”

There was a long pause.

Hawkeye bit her lower lip, an unusual betrayal of feeling.

Then she said, “No.”

“Oh, come _on_ , Lieutenant!” Roy shouted, feeling strung along.

“If you want him to know how to drive, you teach him,” Hawkeye said.

“We’ll kill each other,” Roy grumbled.

“All the more reason to leave it alone, sir,” Hawkeye said with that _wicked_ glint in her eyes. “Coffee, sir?”

“Stop saying sir,” Roy ordered grumpily. “You make it sound like an insult.”

“I can’t imagine how, sir,” Hawkeye said, waiting. Her hands were clasped behind her back and not a twitch of muscle anywhere betrayed her amusement, but Roy could _feel_ it.

“Yes, I want coffee,” he said. “And if you come back with more paperwork, I will _demote_ you.”

“You couldn’t do that, sir,” Hawkeye said. “You wouldn’t be able to find the paperwork to file.”

Roy shot her a disgusted look and then, the tiniest curve of a smile cracked the stony expression on her face.

“I’ll buy you a helmet,” she said. “For when you teach Fullmetal to drive.”

“You’re too kind,” Roy said, in the driest tone he could muster. “Make sure he’s in East City next week.”

“Yes, sir,” Hawkeye said, without a hint of insubordination. “You have a meeting in two hours.”

A glorious, blessed, perfect window. He could have kissed her. She didn’t hate him after all. The door closed behind her and he didn’t even bother grabbing his crutches to hop across the floor to the couch. She must have known he hadn’t slept last night, and he could get at least an hour before she came back.

He could think about dealing with Fullmetal later.

* * *

The desk was like a fortress to hide behind and Roy didn’t mind utilizing it.

Edward Elric had not responded well to Roy’s offer to teach him to drive. It may have had something to do with the fact that Roy presented it less like an offer and more like something just short of an order.

That had been a mistake, and he was glad Lieutenant Hawkeye was the only one left in the room. Fuery had stepped out to find coffee and a late dinner; everyone else had gone home for the night.

It meant they weren’t there to hear him get dangerously close to begging, to _negotiating_.

Roy didn’t, as a rule, negotiate with terrorists.

The situation with Fullmetal was special, however, as almost all things surrounding Edward Elric seemed to be. It was his own compliance that Edward held hostage, and Roy couldn’t ever escape the fact that he’d helped a fourteen year old join the military.

It was a fine balancing act, demanding the obedience expected of a soldier– a thing Edward could not in fairness escape, since his age was irrelevant to the technical fact of _being in the military_ – and giving him some of the freedom that fourteen year old boys required. Roy didn’t mind if orders sometimes chafed, but the last thing he wanted was to be the catalyst for a trial for treason.

Roy knew as well as anyone ever had what it was like to receive an order that contradicted everything in you, and subject yourself to iron obedience anyway. And he’d been an _adult_ , one now haunted by his decision. He wished he’d had some of the reckless disregard of youth, then. Perhaps the price would have only been his own life.

The only way to protect Edward Elric from refusing an order that would lead to punishment, death or severance from research, was to simply not give him orders he felt bound to refuse. This meant Roy handled him with kid gloves, a thing Fullmetal would loathe if he knew. A dozen orders might spill out of him in the span of an hour at the rest of his team, but he kept his actual orders to Edward as sparse as possible. He kept it to the absolutely necessary, matters of safety or common goals or crucial work.

And Edward still thought he was a rigid hardass with a control problem.

Teenagers.

“If I want to drive, I’ll figure it out,” Fullmetal said.

“You didn’t,” Roy retorted. The drive with his broken leg should have been a blur, but instead it was an indelible etching, acid scratched over metal. It joined the parade of things that kept him awake at night. What if he’d passed out? What if his leg had refused to cooperate, or the bone had been so misaligned he couldn’t put enough weight on the clutch?

Edward could be _dead_.

The mob hadn’t necessarily been out for murder, but it was a mob– all it took was a half second, a hesitation, a shovel’s edge. A panicked swing could kill before anyone knew what had happened.

“Maybe I didn’t care if you had to drive,” Edward shot back, but there was just that slightest flicker of guilt in his tone.

“It’s a necessary skill in our line of work,” Roy said evenly, ignoring the remark. “Have you considered what would have happened if you and Alphonse were alone?”

“I would have fought them off,” Edward said, with a wave of his hand.

“And if one of them had disabled your automail? If someone else did? It’s dangerous to be dependent on the abilities of others.”

Lieutenant Hawkeye shot him an incredulous look from behind Edward. Roy kept from visibly wincing, but just barely. Anyone who didn’t know Edward well wouldn’t have seen any change in him, but Roy knew him just enough to see the shift, the minute rise of his shoulders as he set himself against a world where he and Alphonse were on their own.

Berating himself inwardly, Roy tried to salvage things.

“Every member of my team should be prepared to take care of each other in the field. They wouldn’t let you down, and they expect the same from you. Together, we make a unit. Divided, we are nothing at all. You pull your own weight or you’re failing all of us, including yourself.”

Fullmetal’s shoulders relaxed, but his scowl didn’t soften.

One of the things Roy hated was knowing a rebuke about responsibility was one of the surest ways to get to Edward– so desperate to function as an adult, to have others see him that way, and so much of it out of necessity. He could have protested _this_ and he wouldn’t have been wrong to do so, but he couldn’t have the military and his childhood at the same time.

Roy wouldn’t be doing him any favors by coddling him.

“Fine,” Ed muttered. “Anything else?”

“No,” Roy said, swallowing his sigh of relief. Ed turned on a heel, his coat flaring, and stomped out of the room. Alphonse lingered behind, and when the footsteps receded enough, he turned to Roy with as much apologetic air as he could muster in a suit of armor.

“I’m sorry about Brother, Colonel,” he said, his young voice clear. “He’s embarrassed because he doesn’t already know. He’ll be there tomorrow.”

Then he left, hurrying after his brother.

Roy slumped forward over the desk, his face in one hand.

“Damn him,” he said between his teeth.

Lieutenant Hawkeye said nothing, not in condemnation or consolation.

“Fourteen years old and he feels guilty for not knowing how to drive,” Roy said, dropping his hand.

“He isn’t fourteen, sir,” Lieutenant Hawkeye reminded him gently. “He’s a soldier.”

Roy nodded wearily.

Suddenly, his stomach clenched. The guilt washed over him and he eyed his lieutenant, suspecting now she’d refused for reasons other than her reluctance to give Edward Elric more power and knowledge.

Was this just another way Roy was complicit in ripping away any remnant of Ed’s childhood? Had she known that’s what it would be, this simple insistence on gaining a skill?

It was too late to back out now.

* * *

Dawn was an hour away when Roy kept his car idling at the front of the imposing building, waiting for Fullmetal to come down. The sky was black as pitch, clouds hiding stars from view.

Ed emerged from the building fifteen minutes after the pickup time, stretching and eating a roll. He still looked groggy from sleep. He opened the door and froze, halfway onto the seat.

“Colonel?” he asked.

“Fullmetal,” Roy returned.

Ed glanced back at the building, almost as if he were checking it was still there. A deep frown scored his face.

“I thought the Lieutenant…” Ed said, trailing off. “Havoc? Are they?”

Oh. He hadn’t expected _Roy_ to teach him.

“Fullmetal,” Roy said in a dry tone, intending comfort by his unalarmed attitude. “If Lieutenants Hawkeye or Havoc were in trouble, do you think I’d be here?”

“If you needed my alchemy,” Ed said, throwing himself into the seat and shoving the rest of the roll into his mouth.

Roy waited a moment but Alphonse didn’t appear.

“He’s going to the library,” Ed answered the unspoken question, around a mouthful of bread. “Are we going or not?”

The ache in Roy’s leg was dull. The bone had mended enough that he could drive again for short distances, but the limb reminded him it wasn’t completely healed. He navigated through the sleeping city toward an academy drill yard on the outskirts, one used for parade and dress drills.

He cut the engine.

Crickets chirped out here, in the shorn grass bordering the canal. They were close enough to a line of trees to hear early birdsong.

The drive through East City had eaten up that remaining hour of night. The horizon was flushed pink, and the clouds had blown away to reveal a vivid teal sky above them. If this were any other morning, he’d be buttoning his uniform collar right now, sipping coffee while waiting for the Lieutenant. Instead, he was here, in slacks and a dress shirt like it was a day’s leave.

An hour. This would take an hour and then he could go back to his apartment, shower, change, and go in. He hadn’t actually _been_ to his apartment last night.

He turned to the sulking boy in the passenger seat. Ed had thrown his red coat into the backseat and was yawning.

Suddenly, Roy was terrified.

What was he doing teaching a kid to drive? His own father, a thin wisp of a concept more than any actual memory, hadn’t taught him to drive. Even Berthold Hawkeye hadn’t, not that Roy would have asked. He hunted desperately for a moment for the memory, knowing it was there and had been misplaced.

Maes Hughes. Maes had taught him to drive, during their academy days, in a car loaned by a cousin he had that had gone out of town for the summer.

In that moment, Roy could have beat his head on the dash. Why hadn’t he asked _Maes?_ Surely, Fullmetal would have taken it better from him anyway. Even before he’d had Elicia, Maes had exuded a natural paternal energy. There were times he annoyed the hell out of Roy, but he had a knack for putting people at ease.

“Let’s go over the instruments,” Roy said woodenly.

Ed didn’t so much as look his way.

His gaze was on his knees, his flesh hand tense against the car upholstery.

“Al said I was rude,” Ed said, a little too loudly. He flushed, lowered his voice a little, but barreled ahead as if he’d rehearsed his words. “You’re just trying to help, and you’re giving up your own time to do it. The only one responsible for my situation is me. I shouldn’t treat people who help me with ingratitude.”

“What speech was my lieutenant going to get?” Roy asked, and Ed’s golden eyes blazed with irritation.

“One praising her patience in putting up with _you_ ,” Ed said, and he held Roy’s gaze with his chin arrogantly tilted. He was stubborn, but Roy could see the smoldering panic buried in him.

“Fullmetal,” Roy said, shifting his gaze to the field out of the windshield. “Is it so hard to believe that there are people who _want_ to help you?”

“Yes,” Ed said simply. “Why should they?”

 _Because you’re a kid,_ Roy wanted to say. _Because you’re goddamned fourteen years old, and you don’t have parents, because you need someone taking care of you._

“I have to do my best,” Ed continued. “The people who do help us do so out of their own goodness, and I can’t let them down. And I shouldn’t expect them to always be there.”

Before he’d met the Elric brothers, Roy didn’t think he had any heart left to break. Where his heart had once been, he had a driving passion for bringing justice and change to his country, and a bone-deep loyalty to those who served under him. Even his bond with his Lieutenant was something made of iron, forged by flame and blood, and not mere feeling.

His heart, still organic, still there, still painfully real, broke a little more now. It was glass shards being ground into his chest and for a second, he didn’t breathe.

More than crying or anger would have cut, it was the mere matter of factness that Ed spoke with.

“This is the clutch,” Roy said, hoping the hoarseness in his voice was mild enough to pass as exhaustion.

“I know what a clutch is, Colonel,” Ed said, bored and unimpressed. He yawned again and his finger flicked through the air, pointing. “Clutch, gas, brake, ignition, starter, throttle.”

“You forgot spark,” Roy said, unsurprised. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Ed had stayed up half the night reading car manuals.

“I hadn’t gotten there yet,” Ed said, with a spiteful curl of his lip. He was lying and they both knew it. Roy’s irritation rose. They wouldn’t get anywhere if Ed was skipping steps and smart mouthing him.

So much for apologies.

“Are you going to let me actually teach you anything?” Roy asked.

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “Are you going to teach me something I don’t know yet?”

With his face toward the driver’s side window, as if he was staring across the drill yard, Roy closed his eyes and exhaled slowly through his teeth.

“Out of the car,” Roy said.

“You’re giving up already?” Ed asked. It was hard to pin down whether it was pure mockery or smothered panic.

Roy gave him a level look.

“If you’re going to drive, you’ll have to be in the driver’s seat,” he said, as calmly as he could muster. It was exceedingly calm. He had a lot of practice.

“I don’t have to get out of the car for that,” Ed grumbled, crossing his arms and trying to cover for himself.

Roy got out of the car and pretended to be coughing so he could muffle a yell into his sleeve. The air was crisp and he inhaled deeply, filling his lungs. Something crackled like crumpled paper in his chest and he coughed for real.

He had to brace himself on the car while he caught his breath.

True to his protest, Ed didn’t get out of the car. He scrambled over to the driver’s side when Roy opened the passenger door.

Wide, worried eyes met his when Roy looked over the bench. Ed was worrying his lower lip with his teeth.

“You aren’t sick, are you?” he asked abruptly. “Hughes said you feel responsible for me, but this isn’t a last ditch effort before you die?”

“Hughes said what?” Roy asked, blinking.

Ed waved his hand dismissively, but his gaze remained intent and focused. “Sick,” he repeated, the word rasping like leather soles against brick. “Are you sick?”

 _Oh, hell,_ Roy thought, in the midst of trying to parse this sudden change in demeanor. _His mom._

“No,” Roy said, without a hint of teasing about the sudden concern.

The kid looked dubious, honey-brown eyes narrowed.

“No,” Roy repeated more firmly. The taller grass along the canal, dusky green with late summer, swayed in the east wind. His throat was tight but not from fighting a cough this time. “The air is dry.”

“We’re near a fucking desert,” Ed said, and he sounded angrier than Roy had ever heard him. He wondered idly how much of Edward Elric’s anger masked fear.

“When the air is dry,” Roy said, wishing he could gather his thoughts enough to stop repeating himself, “it irritates my lungs. It has since Ishval.”

This was too much. He was saying too much to try to make Fullmetal relax, putting too much on a kid. Whatever regrets Roy carried, and there were so many of them, he didn’t need to risk souring the kid on the military funding his research. That was the part of the military he was trying to keep Ed from, that he hoped to change someday.

“Smoke?” Ed guessed.

Roy nodded. A gray bird hopped along the field, pecking at insects Roy couldn’t see.

 _It gets worse when I’m exhausted_ , Roy could have added. _It feels worse when it wakes me up, when I think I can’t breathe, when I think I’m burning with them. I hate myself most when I’m relieved that it’s only nightmares. I don’t think I deserve to get to wake up from that. I can do alchemy but not campfires, because the smell of woodsmoke is so clean it made me throw up on Hawkeye’s boots once._

He could have added it, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t even want to think it, much less say it.

“If I find out you’re lying, I’ll break your other leg,” Ed said, into the long silence. Roy tore his gaze away from the field. Ed was hunched forward, glaring out the windshield, his back a hooked arch like an animal curling up to protect itself.

“I’m not lying,” Roy said softly. “I’m fine. Do you think the Lieutenant would leave me alone for a second if I was actually ill?”

This was the final proof Ed seemed to need.

“When,” he started. He stopped, rubbing the side of his thumb against the stitching in the leather wrapped around the steering wheel. It was an oddly childlike motion, the impulse to soothe not stilled by self-consciousness. He swallowed, the Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing. “When my mom…”

The half sentence hung there in the air, unfinished and bare of any real meaning except the grief tucked inside the few words.

“It started with coughing,” Roy guessed. It wasn’t an uncommon story, unfortunately. But most people in Amestris had _family_ – cousins, grandparents, aunt and uncles.

Ed nodded.

For a moment, he was flooded with an irrational level of anger at Edward Elric’s mother, who must have known she was seriously sick, that dying was a possibility, and hadn’t done anything as far as he knew to make arrangements for her young sons.

“Never mind,” Ed said roughly, grabbing aimlessly at the gear shift. “Forget it. It’s not like it’s the same, it’s not, and I don’t care, it’s just that it reminded me.”

Roy felt like he was taking a step back from a sheer cliff face, one shuffling inch at a time. He wasn’t ready for this, he wasn’t ready for conversations that led to crying, because he wasn’t sure he knew how to offer comfort that didn’t sound hollow, and he couldn’t offer anything false.

“It’s alright, Fullmetal,” Roy heard himself say.

“Hughes said your mother died,” Ed said.

It didn’t feel like stepping back from a ledge anymore. It felt like being whipped around on a crashing train, ricocheting between walls as a car turned end over end.

“Hughes says a lot he shouldn’t,” Roy said darkly, though he knew, he _knew_ Maes Hughes for all his babbling mouth wouldn’t ever betray a secret or even sensitive information unless it felt like it was absolutely warranted.

But the damage was done. Ed’s expression shuttered, to something stony, and he shrugged a shoulder.

“I didn’t think you felt responsible for me anyway,” Ed said. “Hughes just sees what he wants to see. He thinks everyone is as nice as he is.”

“No,” Roy said, knowing Hughes had seen far too much for this to be anything remotely close to true. There was a slender window to undo the wreck his words, his guardedness had caused. “Hughes wasn’t wrong. Turn the ignition first.”

Ed startled, but was quick to comply, apparently eager to move on.

“Lift the spark lever, keep it up, put it in neutral,” Roy said, watching carefully as Ed’s hand fluidly carried out each task. “Pull the throttle down– not that much– there is good. Push the starter, pull the choke, ease up on the clutch, shift the spark level down, adjust the throttle.”

The car jerked forward when Ed moved the gear stick into first. They went all of ten feet, Roy talking the whole time, before the car made a horrific grinding noise and stalled.

“What did I do,” Ed asked quickly.

“You didn’t listen when I said ease up on the clutch,” Roy said.

“You _didn’t_ say to ease up,” Ed retorted.

“I did,” Roy said, “three times.”

“Then I didn’t hear you,” Ed said defensively.

“Let’s start over,” Roy said, refusing to let Ed see how close he was to pulling at his own hair. He could be patient. He could be patient with a touchy fourteen year old. He was an _adult_.

An adult who got into a screaming match with the fourteen year old fifteen minutes later, after seven more starts and stops. They hadn’t made it even halfway across the field and Roy rued the earlier version of himself who had thought this would take an _hour_.

“I _am_ easing up on the throttle!” Ed yelled, at Roy’s more and more insistent (and louder and louder) instruction.

“That _isn’t the throttle_!” Roy shouted back. “It’s the _spark lever_!”

“Well, if you’d shut up, Colonel Prick, maybe I could think, _sir_!” Ed screeched.

With the frustration of someone who has said the same thing a dozen times, Roy roared, “Take _YOUR FOOT OFF THE CLUTCH!_ ”

The engine stalled.

Ed screamed, wordless and animalistic, to drown out Roy.

Roy snapped his mouth shut, threw himself against the door as he jerked hard on the handle, and got out of the car. He slammed the door behind him, feeling incredibly juvenile, and buried his face in both hands.

He was a Colonel. Other than Hawkeye, not a single man on his team had ever seen him as rattled as this. None of them had the capacity to run his fuse this low, not even on a bad day.

He twisted to frown sternly at Ed, who glared balefully in return. Roy drew in a measured breath and stepped back.

“Think, then,” he said, loudly enough for Ed to hear him. “I’ll wait out here.”

“Suits me,” Ed yelled back through the glass. “That should have been the first plan!”

Out here, it _was_ easier to think. Roy stood back on the edge of the field, watching Ed move across a short stretch in fits and starts. He wished desperately for a cup of coffee, but the weather was pleasant, and it wasn’t every day he got to see the sun in the sky without an emergency looming.

Intelligible howling poured out of the car every time it stopped and a few times when it wouldn’t start. Roy waited. He waited until Ed got quiet. The kid could focus when he really wanted to, he could _lose_ himself in something. He just had to burn off all that energy first.

Belatedly, Roy wondered if he should have started him with running laps. Actually _getting_ Ed to run laps sounded like a task beyond him, though, and he dismissed the thought. He stifled a yawn. Later today, his Lieutenant would urge him to go home early to sleep and he was going to just listen to her.

The car’s interior was quiet now, though Ed hadn’t made much progress.

When he let his forehead drop forward on the steering wheel, Roy limped across the field. He probably should have his crutches, but he’d stopped taking them everywhere sometime around the end of week three.

Roy opened the passenger door and ducked his head to peer inside.

“How is it going?” he asked dryly.

“Shut up,” Ed returned, devoid of passion.

“Ready to listen to me?” Roy asked.

Ed shrugged listlessly. “Why not.”

Roy sat in the passenger seat and went through the checklist of steps in a quiet voice.

Without argument, Ed followed each direction and then asked, “Is that the Lieutenant?”

Roy glanced out the window at the empty field. There was a quiet clap and the car flew forward so fast he had to catch himself on the dash to keep from smashing into the windshield.

He was out of the car the second it stopped, staring at the torn and ruined field behind them.

Ed didn’t even look sheepish. He just threw his head back and laughed, full of wicked glee like a imp from a fairytale.

“You cannot _transmute the road_ ,” Roy said, biting the inside of his cheek hard. He would be damned if he let the kid know how close to laughing with him he was. “Get out here and fix this. Then we do it the right way.”

“Ugh,” Ed whined, dragging himself out. “I moved the car, didn’t I? Why can’t I just do this when I need to go somewhere?”

Roy’s lips pressed into a flat line and Ed said, “Okay, okay!” and clapped, then put a hand to the ground. The field shifted and shimmered and smoothed out again.

They returned to the car and Roy watched him to make sure he wouldn’t do it again.

Ed was slumped forward, sitting on the edge of the seat, and Roy could have kicked himself.

“Fullmetal,” he said, “get your coat and roll it up.”

Ed looked at him quizzically.

“You’re too short, you need something to–”

“I’m _not short_!” Ed threw himself sideways across the door and flung an arm over his face. “If you say it again I’ll–”

“You need something to sit on so you aren’t standing while working the pedals,” Roy finished, as if Ed hadn’t reacted at all.

Ed grumbled but rolled up the coat and wedged it under his butt. Roy sat in the passenger seat, braced one arm inconspicuously against the door, and went through the checklist of steps again.

Without argument, Ed followed each direction and within minutes was cruising at a decent clip across the field. Roy talked him through shifting gears, and then downshifting.

He went in circles, tugging hard at the wheel, but he didn’t complain about the effort it required. After twenty minutes of relative peace and success, he downshifted and braked until the car was idling.

“Out,” Ed barked.

“What?” Roy said, bewildered.

Ed turned and shoved against his shoulder, pushing him toward the door. “Out! Get out! I have to see if I can do it alone, too, or it doesn’t matter!”

“Alright, alright,” Roy conceded, hands up to pacify. “Stop pushing your superior officer. I’ll get out on my own.”

“Superior my ass,” Ed mumbled under his breath.

“What?” Roy demanded, even though he’d heard.

“Nothing!” Ed crowed. “Out!”

Roy limped to the edge of the field again. This time, Ed got the car started and moving without a hitch. He did a few more wide circles and drove back and forth a few times.

The sun was climbing. Roy slipped his hands into his pockets and watched a hawk circle in drifting spirals in the distance.

Then a rush of wind stirred near him. Ed bellowed, “MUSTANG!” as the car flew by, toward the drop off to the canal.

Roy took off after the car in an awkward lope, his leg protesting, while he shouted, “The brake, Ed! Ed! Pull the _damn parking brake!_ ”

His gloves were on his hands, out of sheer habit that took over when he started running, and the car tipped into the canal with a splash and a cry from the interior.

The ache in his chest this time was from his pounding heart, as he sprinted to the canal, dreading what he’d find. Ed through the windshield, his head sliced open and bashed on rocks? The car upside down, crushing him?

The car was upright in six inches of water. Ed must have clambered almost before it settled, and had tripped. He was sitting in the water, arms crossed, an almost comically grumpy expression twisting his features.

Roy leaned to prop his hands against his knees. The air rushed out of him so fast he thought he was going to fall over, and he focused on the muddy bank to keep himself from blacking out.

“The car wouldn’t respond! Stop laughing!”

It wasn’t laughter that kept him bent over, but Roy forced a smile anyway. He straightened and took his gloves off, one finger at a time, while Ed sat in the water.

“You can’t hold the clutch down,” Roy said. He stepped down into the water and held a hand out to Ed, who ignored it and stood up. Only then did Roy start examining the car for damage.

“You put my car in the canal,” Roy observed.

“And if you tell anyone, I’ll say you’re lying,” Ed said sharply.

“Get my car out of the canal and no one will ever know,” Roy said. “I don’t know how one of the smartest people I’ve ever met can’t manage driving.”

Ed rolled his eyes and clapped his hands together.

Ten minutes later, they were sitting in the car again, Ed in clothes mostly dry from the fire Roy started for a few minutes.

“Ease up on the clutch,” Roy reminded him. “Don’t tap it, don’t floor it all the time. Smooth down, smooth up."

There was a curt nod and Ed started the car.

If anyone had told Roy that he’d doze off while letting Edward Elric drive, he would have scoffed at them. But Ed drove in circles and lanes around the field and Roy’s exhaustion caught up with him. He drifted off, head tipped against the glass, and only roused when Ed cut the engine.

“Do you really think I’m one of the smartest people you’ve ever met?” Ed asked quietly.

Roy rubbed sleep out of his eyes with the tips of his fingers, faintly embarrassed to have fallen asleep, and nodded.

“I do. You are, Ed. You have a brilliant mind. You wouldn’t have made it this far if you didn’t.”

“Oh,” Ed said, low and pensive. “I didn’t … I thought you thought I was stupid.”

“I don’t keep stupid people in my unit,” Roy said. “You _act_ stupid sometimes, but so did all of us at your age. Even the lieutenant. Trust me on that. The difference is that you don’t have the room to mess up.”

“Yeah,” Ed breathed, and Roy ached for him, for the weight this kid was carrying and that he was asking him to do _more_ , to be more. “But it’s what we have to do, to get Al’s body back.”

“I know,” Roy said.

There was the ache of what he was putting on those thin shoulders, and the ache of knowing he couldn’t fix the thing that drove Ed. Taking it away from him would have been more cruel. He had to just hope and trust the kid was tough enough to survive it all.

“Drive us back,” Roy ordered.

“Thank you,” Ed said, not looking at him. “For doing this. For teaching me. I’m sorry I said…that I said I didn’t care if you were sick. I do care.”

“I know,” Roy said, though he hadn’t. He reached out and ruffled Ed’s hair, getting an indignant squawk of protest for his trouble. He dropped his hand to Ed’s shoulder instead, not sure why he did it, except that it seemed like the sort of thing Maes would do.

Rather than shrugging him off, Ed leaned into the grip. It surprised Roy enough to keep his hand utterly still.

“I’m here if you need me,” Roy said. He meant it, like he meant it for any of his team, but he suspected this kid might need it in a way none of them did. That paralyzed him with fear, but he wouldn’t leave him behind, either.

“The office?” Ed asked, and Roy gave the narrow shoulder a final squeeze and withdrew his hand.

The car jerked forward and Roy yelped, “Take your foot _off the clutch!_ ”


End file.
